Heidi's Skin Is Improving

It turned out to be a beautiful day yesterday. All 3 hounds had a relaxed walk, the temps were perfect and I got a lot done.

I was so busy I didn't make it back to the blog late yesterday but did take the trip in the car I had an urge to take ... not what you expected.

Before I start, those are all yellow weeds I am told but they are great looking yellow weeds. I left two of them standing while I cut weeds near the bank after mowing. Last May I walked over to that field to take more photos of them before they were plowed under for planting. I think the horse trailer that is parked there this year adds a little touch to the photo.

After seeing the changes in Heidi's skin Friday and early Saturday morning I decided to give Heidi's skin a day off from the ointment. It was red and inflamed. Her stomach was reacting in some way that concerned me. I wanted to see if it would be red and inflamed without it. I was also going to find out if the grass had anything to do with her skin reactions because Heidi wanted to go on the walk yesterday.

I could tell early on by her pace and amount of exploring that she would not make the walk with us. I would let her lag back into her own little world. She did just that and enjoyed the time it seemed, just to be exploring the area around here.

Sadie and Stella were not their normal energetic selves either. They walked most of the way, never ran and didn't not go to their normal areas.

Heidi was pretty far back in this photo but my 200mm setting finally worked. It has not been working must past 135mm most of the time recently.

You can tell that the bloodhounds were not too excited ... a general checking the areas. The most excitement was on the way back where Sadie saw Heidi but didn't know what she was. Sadie took off running and Stella approached cautiously because she was a little spooked not knowing.

They were wagging their tails once they realized who it was.

Needless to say, it was a slow walk back home for the hounds. At least their tails were up but you can see that Stella is walking slower than slow.

A little after 1pm I took this photo of Heidi. Remember the last dose of WWO was the prior afternoon. Those dark spots are coloring caused by the ointment. I am seeing improvement and not because there is no redness.

The spots are not inflamed. I can see where the skin on her chest and neck are drying out, flaking off like dead skin. So today I will be applying multiple doses throughout the day and night. I am going to give her a bath this afternoon to clean off the dead skin.

By this time of day I still had not taken that drive to somewhere I had spoke of early Saturday morning. I couldn't make up my mind where I wanted to go ... so I didn't go anywhere. I had the urge to enjoy the day outside and pick up the remaining tree limbs blown down by the last storm. The grass was dry enough to mow ... and with all the rain in the previous days ... the grass was really tall. I can tell the seeding I did last year has made a difference this spring ... more grass, less weeds in the front and back yards.

So where did the hounds and I go for a drive??? No further than the local Dairy Queen downtown for a large Hawaiian Blizzard ... a great treat after the workout of mowing up and down that hill in front.

After spending more time outside to enjoy the afternoon, cleaning up and having dinner, it was already past 7:30 pm. I got involved with two games on tv. I had the Reds/Cubs game on one channel and then at 8pm turned it on to the Chicago Blackhawks hockey game. For the next few hours I rotated back and forth between games during the period breaks in the hockey game.

The hounds snored through both games and not much was done afterwords. The yard mowing is a good workout. It always puts me to bed before midnight which is rare for me. The mower is only a push mower and since I like mowing the front in different directions each time, two out of three trips will be pushing that mower up that hill in front.

I can tell it's going to be another beautiful day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Some Saturday Morning Rambling

If you thought my blog was boring yesterday you will hate it today ... it feels worse. It's to the point that I decided to write one of my "rambling" posts that I do from time to time.

As you can tell from the blog appearance I was a little bored this morning and did a little redesign work. I was about to change to a totally different template and colors but after spending time looking at the different options and playing around with colors and different fonts on this template ... I deiced to make a minor change to the date color so it would show my different posts a little better. I also added a little gray to the sidebars so they would not run into the posting part of the blog ... separate them a little.

I like to write so that is one reason I write these "rambling" posts every once in a while and writing is another reason I have two other blogs that are set to the private setting. Some say even that is not safe so I had to ask myself when I decided to go that direction, "is there anything here that I would not want the public to see?" ... the answer is always no.

If you feel like reading on, I have some photos of Heidi's skin and my thoughts as we start Day 4 of the Wounded Warrior Ointment. I don't have any photos of the hounds except this one of Stella ... because we have not done anything outside and it's already 12:30pm as I write this.

So ... for those that want to cut this post short and not waste your time, I may have something more in depth tonight and with more photos. I do know I have the 'itch' to do something today that involves driving, I just don't know yet what that might be or where it will lead us.

As you can see Stella wasn't much more enthused about this morning as I was.

I noticed on our late evening walk we ended up taking last night after I posted it was not going to happen, Sadie was having some digestive problems. Nothing had changed in her food so it hopefully is just a 24 hour bug. Still at 3am I can't say that I was happy about getting up to take her outside.

My little LED camping flashlight wasn't strong enough to see her in the field but the sky was bright enough that I could barely catch her as a dark figure roaming the field. She has never requested to go outside at that time of morning except when she was a 12 week old puppy and we were house training.

I couldn't see if she was dumping tanks or just locked onto a scent ... she was trotting fast all over the field but she also does that at times when she is looking for her perfect spot to relieve herself. She must be okay today since she has been sleeping all morning. At least there have been no accidents in the house.

Consequently after waking up and getting up in the middle of the night I needed coffee and I needed it bad this morning when the hounds finally woke up. They let me sleep in until 8:30 am. I did wake up on my own when I THOUGHT I felt something crawling on me ... like one of those small ticks.

As you see in the upper left corner, our tick count continues to increase at a rapid rate. They seem to love Stella's ears, they don't like Sadie and Heidi isn't out enough to collect them. Most of mine if not all of mine are caught crawling before they attach themselves.

I emailed Stella's previous owner last night asking her what she used for tick prevention on her outdoor herding dogs that live on a Kentucky horse farm. What a better place to have a tick problem. She said she had great results with this collar, the Bayer Seresto Flea and Tick collar. She didn't see a tick on her dogs or Stella at all during the summer or about 6 months total time.

Remember that all my links I put in my posts are not affiliate links, only links that provide information. They are safe to click.

Somewhere during my coffee I decided I was going to get online and look for a game store locally where I could by the old board game Strat-O-Matic Baseball. I knew it had gone to an online game or a computer game ... but I want the board game. Actually while reading Greg's story about his puzzle last night ... that was when I started thinking about the board game.

I mean I can't sit all day at the kitchen table, while looking out the large window at the traffic passing by ... playing Mahjong all the time. I use to love playing that baseball game, keeping score and then writing out the stats for the Top 10 in different categories like the newspapers use to do.

So took most of my morning, looking online then calling a lot of game shops in central Indiana trying to find the board game that I could bring home today. After hours of doing that, wanting to drive somewhere in the back of my mind ... I'll have to buy the game online and have it shipped. In the meantime I'll give it a day or two to see if I really want to start playing that game again or try my hand at putting puzzles together.

Now on to Heidi. I've been taking photos at different times so I can see any differences in her skin as we use the Wounded Warrior Ointment. Yesterday around 2pm I had a scare when I looked at her stomach and noticed it was not a smooth texture but each little piece had it's own boundary.

Because of this plus it was a little more red than the photo shows ... I did not apply the ointment for the rest of the night.

 
This morning around 8:45 am when I looked at that same side of her stomach a lot of those, what I called "individual" pieces had moved back to a smoother texture although still evident. In the area on the far left, the skin was dried out and rough ... I took that as her skin is healing from the use of the ointment. I cannot explain what was going on yesterday in the first photo.

I wanted to wait until now to see what her skin looked like before applying any ointment today. We have had only 5 doses since it arrived on Wednesday afternoon in the mail.

There is another possibility ... most of the time she sleeps curled up on that side of her stomach. That skin is always hidden underneath her and not exposed to the air. The opposite side of her stomach is normal with a smooth texture. Did the confined ointment make her skin react that way? I don't know.

Sadie and Stella have passed their normal time for their lunch. No begging, no howling for food ... both sound to sleep. That proves today is not lined up correctly with the moon and stars. The whole day is out of whack.

I had other things on my mind to write about in my next "rambling" post and now I sit here trying to remember them. I hate it when that happens to my memory and it seems to be happening more and more.

I saw on one of the news sites that more and more consumers are moving back from smart phones to flip phones. I did that for the first time last November. So far so good but I do miss a couple of things from the iPhone ... the camera capability for those unexpected shots. Also the "note" program that helped me during the times my memory lapsed.

Still when I can see after a year I will have saved $444, I am still quite hesitant in going back to the new iPhone SE. Of course Verizon sent me an email yesterday telling me "you can buy the new iPhone SE at FULL retail price" ... 2 months before my upgrade month.

On one  of the pages I follow on Facebook, called Juicing for Life, it had an article about drinking water decreased your chances of a heart attack. I read on. After figuring out how much water I needed to drink every day to reap those benefits I realized they don't know how my bladder now operates ... LOL ... no way can I drink that much water every day.

How much do you need?  Take your weight and divide it by two. That number is the amount of ounces of water you need to drink every day. Take that number and divide my eight and see how many glasses that amounts to. Good luck!

I don't need two vehicles since I am barely driving either of them since being retired. Yet, I like having a different car to drive at times when I need a change. Is that a bad thing?

Well I need to get going. It's already past 1pm ... the hounds are eating ... I want to go somewhere but don't know where ... it feels cold today with the temps in the 50's. ... none of the hounds have ever lost their appetite.

It's a cold, damp, dreary day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Some Past Hounds

With it raining a couple of times this afternoon between the times the sun came out, the hounds and I didn't do enough to blog about anything. Stella slept, Heidi slept and Sadie paced the house and looked out the door at the rain. 

So instead of leaving the blog blank tonight I thought I'd write something short about some of my hounds I have had in the past. I have not scanned any of my photos that I had planned on a few months ago, but I did find these on my computer. I did lose a lot of photos of them in 2008 when I had one of those moments you wish you could forget ... I reformatted my hard drive thinking I had done a complete backup the week before.

Anyway here are a few of my hounds I had in the past.

Maggie

I bought Maggie as a 8 week old puppy from a type of breeder that is despised by most and gives legitimate breeders a bad name. She was one of many basset hound puppies ... a true puppy mill ... but I didn't know any better as a buyer and besides ... she was a fantastic basset hound.

She was another great hound that I had and hated losing. She had just turned 7 years old when I noticed some swollen lymph nodes that you can see on her neck. This was one of the last photos I took before I had to put her down. She also loved roaming the field in back, never ran away. Heidi's personality reminds me a lot of her.

Bertha

I bought Bertha as a 12 week old bloodhound puppy. Sadie's personality is so close to Bertha's that it scares me sometimes. She did the daily walk, roamed the field for hours on end without ever running off on me. She was 5 years old when I brought Winston home as a 8 week old basset hound puppy ... from that first 5 minutes they were inseparable until Berta died in 2008.

She was pretty large, too overweight by the time she was 4 years old but with some portion control on her food and exercising she dropped over 30 pounds. I don't ever remember her destroying much of anything like Sadie did as a puppy. Bertha loved riding in my Miata with the top down. In fact having the top down was the only way she could fit sitting in the seat.

The link in my upper left sidebar that shows Basset Hound Rescue ... it's GABR in Illinois. Max was my first adoption from them. I drove my Miata 4 hours north to pick him up, not realizing that basset hounds could be much bigger than I had been used to. Max was HUGE ...

He came waddling out into the living room in the home I had driven to and I couldn't believe it. I honestly didn't know if he was going to fit in the passenger seat of the Miata. He did though. His head was laying over the console of the driver side and my 6-speed gearshift was somewhere around his neck ... inside all that excess skin.

He was 81 pounds at the time I got him. The owner said "he only eats dry food if you put cottage cheese on it" ... I thought to myself "no way". I changed him from Pedigree and cottage cheese to the premium food at the time in 1999. One the daily walk, the same path we take now, he didn't make it out of the backyard before he had to sit down and rest (30').

Max

Over the years of walking and giving him better food, his weight dropped to 60 pounds. Two years after I picked him up he went 100% blind with retina degeneration. It didn't matter to him though and friends didn't know when they saw him unless I told them. I kept his chair in the same spot and his food bowl ... he carried on like that for his next 5 years until he passed at the age of 12. Here is a photo of him walking in the field totally blind.

This next bloodhound you already know ... it's Stella this evening getting in a long yoga stretch after sleeping most of the afternoon. She didn't even wake up to change sleeping spots.

Well it took all day but at 7:09pm, the sunshine is out, not a dark cloud in the sky and the birds are all talking at the same time. The ground is too wet to do the late evening walk ... but I have a couple of bloodhounds wanting to go outside.

A beautiful Friday night here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Hounds Cruise Through A Lazy Friday

Stella heard thunder last night and became a little nervous but did not really go crazy. Paced a little but not much. I was told when I got her that she was afraid of thunder. Sadie did nothing but lay down and sleep as did Heidi.

It wasn't too long this morning before the skies turned dark and rolls of thunder were being heard. I had to look at the weather sites to see that it was suppose to be a day of thunderstorms. By noon the sun was trying to come out through the clouds. Needless to say, there has not been a lot of activity her in 'the tropics' so far today.

Heidi's skin looked good this morning as I applied the 4th dose of Wounded Warrior Ointment. All of the redness was gone on shoulders, her legs, insides of her rear feet and armpits. It's hard to tell because of her skin folds but it did look like there was not any inflammation.

Heidi came outside after her lunch. I thought I saw some skin improvement first thing this morning. By noon I wasn't so sure when I looked at her. Then I look at this photo and see a lot of the redness is gone on her rear legs and stomach. She still continues to chew small spots on the edge of her rear shoulder.

While Heidi headed to the front yard, Sadie was chest deep in wet grass. Stella didn't leave the driveway and just stood looking at me as if to ask what now? I thought of taking the walk but 10' into the field I see standing water. If it is that bad at lower elevation it gets worse as we get further away and a little higher.

Once Sadie found out the walk was temporarily called off until later this afternoon ... but that would take some strong sun to help dry out the ground ... she didn't get too far and did a little posting for the camera.

For the first time in a long time my 55-200mm zoom actually worked at the setting of 200mm. It had only been working at 135mm for the past month. I keep having to turn the ring counter clockwise to move the lens back to the original position when set at 55mm. A new 55-300mm Nikkor lens is sounding better all the time.

Temps are rising, sun is trying to come out and those big rain clouds are slowly moving east.

Bloodhounds are a great breed ... but I think it takes a special person to own one. They have a couple of things that other breeds don't have and one of those is drool. Some hounds drool more than others. In this case Stella's is hanging lower than I have seen in a while. It's as strong as that Gorilla glue you see advertised but can be wiped away easy with a Bounty paper towel.

Well back to my addiction of the day ... Mahjong. I am still attempting to get those last few games below 3 minutes and 30 seconds. I justify it by being retired, plus it keeps my hand and eye coordination in good shape.

It's a quiet Friday in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Bloodhounds Play & Heidi Takes The Morning Walk

Earlier today after Stella and Sadie checked out the ground, we found it was not muddy like after a typical rain. It was more like a really heavy dew in the field. I went in to get Heidi and she trotted to the door, made a left turn and headed to the field. Once again I took the leash off and let her go at her own pace today.

Sadie and Stella were happy to be able to walk, Heidi seemed to enjoy it but I was a little off by the amount or wet grass. Just after starting my feet were soaked. I need to get some rubber boots for wet walking.

I could tell that Heidi was more into her own wandering instead of walking. She never tried to stay in front of the other hounds nor me. So after Sadie and Stella were so far ahead of me and she was behind, I let her enjoy her exploring and I walked with Stella and Sadie.

I turned to look a final time at Heidi and she was making no forward progress ... on we went.

Stella practically sprinted for her favorite far right hand corner of the field. Sadie wasn't far behind. I'm not sure what they expected but before I knew it, Stella had walked into the wooded area ... too far.

Once I called her name, she came out running toward Sadie and they were off down the back edge of the field.

It looked like this around us, but I didn't hear thunder plus the radar showed nothing as far as rain when we started the walk.

Once again I had to call Stella's name once she took off for the 'no fly zone' and she came running to catch up to me and Sadie, without hesitation.

As we got closer to the house and had just made the slight veer to the left, Sadie saw Heidi and took off. Stella didn't want to miss any of the action.

I don't think she even left the spot from when I left her. She may have wandered in circles but it was at the same location. She turned around when I said "let's go home" and walked in on the outgoing path we use.

Stella decided it was time to play. She sprinted to the house after Heidi started walking and waited for Sadie to get into the yard. You'll have to excuse the 'pooper scooper' but that is a convenient place for it. I only use if for Heidi's front yard disposals.

Heidi did not try to join in on the fun but got involved just walking to the house as Stella completed her turning fake out.

Due to all this playing the bloodhounds have been sleeping most of the afternoon. Heidi hung out on the couch trying to get her baby socks off after the 1pm application of ointment.

The socks are a 'catch 22' .. they keep her from licking the ointment off her feet but keep the area too moist. She does get the four socks off eventually and has been sleeping more than itching. I have more or less made up my mind that I will finish the 28lb bag of the grain free food and will use both tubes of Wounded Warrior Ointment before I make any decision to change.

I am not going to mix and match baths, ointment or Epsom salts but do one at a time. I need to see what works and what doesn't. Same with the food.

The food will last around 56 days since the bloodhounds eat a different kind. I am not sure how long the two tubes of ointment will last but I would think after they are empty I will know if it works or not.

Plan B - If WWO does not work, it will be a bath with the Burt's Bees Shampoo and then leave on applications of a mixture that is one cup of vinegar per gallon of water. That is suppose to kill the layers of yeast infection.

Plan C - If the water/vinegar mixture does not show improvement I will go back to having the vet give her allergy steroid shots for the first time since September 2014 when they had stopped lasting ore than a week.

Time will tell.

Well the sun just popped out of the clouds ... I think the bloodhounds and I can get another walk in. It will be up to Heidi if she wants to go or not.

It's a cool and damp afternoon here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.